The Foreign Legion
Murderers and misfits, drunkards and heroes, gamblers and duelists, fallen archdukes and hapless derelicts, the French Foreign Legion enjoys a greater mystique than any military organization because it gathers in all of those adventurers who need to flee from some haunted past. Once in the Legion broken men can be born again as warriors under fire, redeemed and washed clean through acts of extraordinary valor. This 1901 journalistic work by Georges D'Esparbes captures the spirit of this legendary corps when it was at its wildest. In it we find tales from France's dedicated mercenary army whose defeats went untold - while their many victories added to the greater glory of La Patrie. While our attitudes towards colonialism have changed, these hilarious, disturbing, awful, and unlikely anecdotes describing the lives of individual legionnaires remain touching and engaging at a very human level. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction: Here you will read about a corpse eating soup, a high ranking clergyman who became a grunt, a crazed Dutchman commandeering his own mental hospital, and an oddly scrupulous drunk who went to great lengths to avoid soiling the barracks. See how it was for men who had hit rock bottom to be reborn under fire from the burning sands of the Sahara to the jungles of Tonkin.